For anyone unfamiliar with one of 2020’s best games, Hades, developed by Supergiant Games, is a roguelike indie that innovates at nearly every turn. Rather than delivering a brooding, atmospheric world sparse on story, Hades veers in the exact opposite direction, with screens brimming with color and vibrance helping display a narrative that unfolds in deep, engaging, and well-traveled ways.
Hades is now coming to current-gen consoles, too, with a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S version that enhances the game’s visuals while preserving its flow of combat. Beyond the minor upgrades that come with these versions, Hades remains exactly the same game it has been since its full launch in 2020, an impossible to put down action romp with a cast of characters that each vie for both the player’s and Zagreus’s affection.
For those who haven’t engaged with Supergiant’s hit, Hades follows protagonist Zagreus, the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape the underworld. His reasons for doing so start simple and eventually build up in complexity, but the idea of leaving the only home he’s ever known is core to both his development as a character and the game’s central gameplay loop. Zagreus has to survive various tiers of the underworld’s labyrinth to see the surface, and whenever he dies, he simply melts into a puddle of blood and re-emerges from the Styx in his childhood home, much to his father’s annoyance and amusement.
The gameplay in Hades is smooth on PlayStation 5, just as much as it was on PC and Nintendo Switch prior. The DualSense controller gets a little love in terms of how it integrates with Hades gameplay, but only insomuch as the game makes some small use of its vibration feedback and audio cues. There’s no real use of the haptic technology in the DualSense, which makes sense, since this iteration of Hades is arriving on multiple platforms that don’t all use the same tech.
The only noticeable leap for Hades is into the realm of 4K-resolution graphics which, as usual, do add to the presentation of the game that’s using them. Hades never needed help looking good, but there’s even more of a feast for the eyes on PlayStation 5, and noticeably, during play it felt like the resolution helped map combat better and prepare for attack dodge timing. That might be a purely placebo effect based on the knowledge that this version of Hades is supposed to look better, but at least during this review, it felt like the crisper visuals made for an even more satisfying time in combat.
Realistically, though, there’s not much to Hades on PlayStation 5 that justifies purchasing the game again if someone already owns it on another platform. PC save transfers aren’t available for PlayStation and Xbox copies, unlike the Nintendo Switch post-launch update that brought the feature to that console, so that’s another knock against these variants for pre-existing Hades owners.
For those who missed out on the game thus far, though, or for those who want to start over fresh on a new platform and grind out of the underworld once more, it’s hard to see much fault in playing Hades on PlayStation 5. The game runs and renders beautifully, the DualSense controller’s great build makes for a device that’s satisfying to play challenging content on, and Hades remains one of the best roguelikes in recent memory regardless of what machine is housing it. As always, the advice ultimately remains the same for those on the fence about the Supergiant Games spin on mythology: go play Hades. Now there’s even more ways to do so.
Hades is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch, with PlayStation and Xbox versions of the game launching on August 13, 2021. Screen Rant was provided with a digital PlayStation 5 code for the purpose of this review.
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